Meaningless, meaningless

In the absence of anything interesting happening in my life, and with Dazza having removed me from his list of friends for failing to update my blog as frequently as he would like, The List has been updated.   My reasoning is thus:

1. Graham Coxon 

How could he possibly move from the top spot when he keeps releasing album after album of melodramatic lovestruck indie musical brilliance?  Tom worries that in our intimate moments I am thinking about Graham.  He has good reason to.

2. Ben Folds

OK, so his music has gone a bit shit now he's happily married and sprogged up, but he is here for sentimental value, as my chat-up line to Tom on our first meeting was, "You look a bit like a cross between Ben Folds and Beck."  (I'm not sure how many people that liine would actually work on.)

3. Steve Jones

I saw him speak at the Hay Festival and immediately went out and bought one of his books.  Intelligent, amiable, funny, Welsh, a good storyteller -- and says the Y chromosome is a parasite, so obviously has his head screwed on right.  May be old, but he's still got it.

4. Brandon from the Killers 

 I actually want to shag this man's voice.  Ohhhhhhhh....

 5.  Michael Palin

Can you believe I was struggling to fill this space?  But then I thought of Michael.  Another fine example of a man who, like a fine wine, has improved with age.  And you just would, wouldn't you?

Discovered at the weekend that I have yet another new reader to add to my ever-growing list of fans. Means I can't say too much about him -- don't want to inflate his ego too much. :-)

 

But, ohhhh, what a fantastic weekend. Got on a train down to London Saturday morning and met Tom at St Pancras. We wandered around for a bit, stopped at a cafe for tea and toast, then the British museum to look at old coins. Back to Tom's to drop my bag off, drink tea and watch his housemates man-handle a Christmas tree into the lounge and into its pot, then we were off to ice skate outside the Natural History museum, where Tom (aka "Ice") impressed me with his superior skating abilities. Until I pushed him over. 0:)

Then we wandered around looking for a pub to eat in, but the amazing-looking food-serving pub was full, so we ended up in the Khyber Pass for a lush curry and Tom took the opportunity to come out as a fellow Woodcraft Folk-er. Hurrah! And then it was back to Acton on the tube.

 

Sunday we watched Tom's Pavement DVD and I convinced him that Steve Malkmus (who I really should get round to adding to the List) dances like me. And we argued about whether Yo La Tengo are rubbish (me) or the best band ever (him). And then we walked down the High Street and bought ginger cake and ginger beer and an interesting shaped vegetable that tasted foul, and decided not to go in Morrisons because it was bustling with dirty Cockneys.

And then it was time to go home and I was left with only fond memories... and the knowledge that I have to go to London on Tuesday for work... :-) :-)

 

Today was really good. Only Julian from my team was in, so the phone hardly rang at all and we got loads done. Now I'm trying to decide whether to go to the last hour of the Flying Teapots sesh tonight. Thinking that once again I probably can't be arsed... I have boxes full of no-longer-needed PhD stuff to ceremonially dispose of. :-) :-)

Not you lot.  Please carry on being nice (in a non-insipid way).  It's Dean.  He just won't stop being nice to me.  Surely, knowing my feelings for him, he should at least be acting a bit weird with me, if not avoiding me completely.  It's all terribly frustrating, knowing that however friendly he's being it's just him being friendly.

His latest transgressions:

• carrying my beer back from the pub quiz for me after we won last week and no one else wanted it
• of his own free will, coming to sit next to me to do a Sudoku when I went to coffee early on Firday
  
• buying me a drink in the Marquis then not letting me buy him one back since Graham had bought my round
• coming with me to get drinks for the others at the Caribbean carnival
• coming with me to help carry when I offered to get corn on the cob for everyone at the Caribbean carnival (which also led to the titillation of the corn cob man referring to him as my husband)
• coming round to watch Donnie Darko with me and finding great amusement in our house's fridge poetry.  And appearing to like the John Hegley poems I showed him.

Surely the man has an unpleasant side.  Where is it?  I must see it, if I am ever to purge myself of this schoolgirl crush.

Went to see War of the Worlds with Dean last night. I arranged for everyone else in our group to be "busy" so it was just me and him.

On the way in I asked him if I could hold his hand in the scary bits.
"No!"
"Spoilsport."
"Uh-huh."

So was steeling myself for rejection all the way through the film.

Then on the way home, after we'd talked about the movie I said I had to ask him something and he said OK.
Me: You know how much I like you, don't you?
Him: I guess.
Me: And you're not interested?
Him: I guess not.

Then silence.

Then I said, "I feel bad," as I was about to admit to getting him there under false pretences, and he said, "I feel bad," so I told him not to.

He's been super-nice to me today. I think he really does feel bad. As he should, having shamelessly led me on in my infatuation for all this time by his utter loveliness... ;)

Very proud of myself for not crying.

Just sent Dean suggestive e-mail.  It started innocently enough with me asking him if they use the word "snog" in Canada.  And then he said, "Why do you ask?" so I told him I was just curious and if I were to say, for example, "I really want to snog you," would he know what I meant?  (And then noted that dictionary.com gets it wrong.)

Ooh... he's replied.  Taken it all in his stride, phew.  Replied to the irrelevant bit.

Pete's comment has really got under my skin.

OK, so the obvious answer to why I don't want to make the first move is because I fear rejection. This in itself is not a big deal. I have experienced rejection many times.

So now we've got the obvious out of the way:

1) Psychological. It seems to me that us women have a deeper emotional need to be wanted. We want to be chosen. Roger may disagree (it's something we once talked about), but men seem to draw as much satisfaction from having made the catch as from being pursued. For women it doesn't work this way.

2) I'm quite enjoying the suspense, the potential, the little signs (presuming they are signs and I'm not reading them wrong). Once you know someone likes you it's not half as titillating.

3) I don't want to pour my heart out and find out that he likes me but doesn't/isn't sure if he wants a relationship. That's worse than straight rejection. By a factor of about 1 zillion. Probe first, ask later.

4) I've asked lots of men out. Lots. Really. It never worked. The one time it did he was a weirdo.

5) I did actually made a move successfully, once. It took a long time and was very gradual. He was a shy bloke, not unlike Dean. I feel that this is the way forward.

6) I feel I may have piqued his interest by showing interest in him. Which means I liked him first. Which means he probably needs a little time to warm up.

7) If I was planning to make a move, what makes you think I'd tell you?

I just typed a lengthy summary of the events of last night and then a window popped up to tell me to save it, I carried on typing and the whole post disappeared. Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa! :'(

Upshot is that I think Dean likes me, but found the sitting-in-a-circle-with-lots-of-jugglers quite awkward.

Ah well.

It's 7.04. Dean is still in his office. I'm considering packing my bag and then wandering over and saying, "Fancy stopping for a drink on the way home?"

Should I? Shouldn't I? Will I? Won't I?

Find out in the next thrilling installment...

Interesting things I could write about today:

1. Darshna's wedding (last Sunday). Big Hindu knees-up, full of remote cousins, aunties, uncles and various random people who she hadn't necessarily ever met. Ceremony conducted in a mixture of English, Gujurati and Sanskrit (with a smattering of French for good measure). No point at which everyone was quiet and watching, people were wandering back and forth chatting throughout the whole thing. Comedy priest who kept apologising for his English, then saying something in Gujurati which would make all the older people laugh. Good food.

2. Lab in a Lorry. It's a lorry. In the grounds of the University, just next to the park. And it's full of fizzics experiments, this year being Einstein Year (100th anniversary of his "annus mirabilus"). And, according to Das (physics Das, not Uncle D), it's about as interesting as a fart in a jar. I'm helping out tomorrow morning, explaining things to schoolkids. Should be fun. I really should start reading about what I'm going to be demonstrating...

3. Juggling - got up to 25 chops at one point last night, yayayayayay! (And of course there's the handsome young(ish) postdoc who happened to be crossing the park just when we were all there last night. I heard Clare sqeak, "Rosie! Rosie!", looked around and Dean was standing right next to me. So of course I went weak at the knees, silly and giggly, and attempted to teach him to juggle. *sigh*)

4. My imminent 15 minutes of fame. I e-mailed the editor of Ship of Fools web magazine asking if I could interview the "Rev Gerald Ambulance" character for the Ship. This morning I got a reply from Rev Gerald's alter-ego saying let's go for it. Woo-hoo!

5. In the lunchtime talks today one of the speakers cited a bloke I've snogged, which sent me off into reverie about the summer of 99, working in Baltimore, finally getting together with this guy on my last night there, then pining for him for the next 3 weeks as I travelled around America on my own. Dean reminds me of him somewhat, which is why I'm determined not to wait until my last week here to let things happen. *sigh* It was also my last session chairing lunchtime talks and I managed to make everyone laugh when announcing it, including Dean. *sigh* again.

So that's what I could write about. What I want to write about is Dean. With much sighing and staring into space as I picture his smile, the way he walks, his voice, the way he laughs at pretty much anything anyone says. Stopping to stroke a cat when he walked me home on Friday night. Telling me repeatedly that baseball is gay (for which I can just about forgive him).

Pathetic, isn't it?

Dean just called me back as I walked past his office and said, "Hey, is it true that your brother got mugged last night?"

He doesn't remember anything at all (apart from walking into the lamppost).

I am redeemed!